Startups

HONG KONG — China on Monday blocked U.S. tech giant Meta’s acquisition of the artificial intelligence (AI) startup Manus, in an unexpected move to reverse a deal that apparently aroused Beijing's concerns about the transfer of advanced technology. In a one-line statement, China’s National Development and Reform Commission, the country's top planning agency, said it was prohibiting a foreign acquisition of Manus and had required all the parties to withdraw from the deal. It did not specifically name Meta Platforms, which owns Facebook and Instagram. The decision was made by the commission’s Office of the Working Mechanism for Security Review of Foreign Investment in accordance with Chinese laws and regulations, the statement said. It came after Chinese authorities said they were looking into the deal earlier this year. The commission did not elaborate on the reasons for the ban. The announcement came less than a month before U.S. President Donald Trump's planned visit to Beijing to meet

Riley Griffin / Bloomberg: Meta says it signed a deal with Overview Energy for 1GW of space solar energy; the startup seeks to collect sunlight in satellites, with a demonstration in 2028  —  Meta Platforms Inc. is looking to power artificial intelligence data centers with solar energy collected in space …

FDA approved a request from Motif Neurotech, to start an initial feasibility trial to test a brain implant to treat depression.

China said Monday it has decided to block Meta's $2 billion acquisition of Manus, a Singaporean AI startup with Chinese roots.

China said Monday it has decided to block Meta's $2 billion acquisition of Manus, a Singaporean AI startup with Chinese roots.

Meir Orbach / CTech: Cyera agrees to acquire Ryft, an Israeli startup building automated data access and governance tools for enterprise AI deployment, sources say for $100M-$130M  —  Ryft, founded in 2024, raised $8 million before the deal and has built tools for automated data access and governance in AI environments.

Lucinda Shen / Axios: Sources: Tokyo-based humanoid robotics startup Genki Robotics, co-founded by Andy Rubin, raised a Series A at a ~$1B valuation; it raised a ~$50M seed in 2025  —  Genki Robotics, a humanoid robotics company co-founded by Android creator Andy Rubin, is valued at about $1 billion following its recent Series A, Axios Pro has learned.

Foundation Future Industries, a San Francisco startup founded in April 2024, has secured $24 million in research contracts with the US Army, Navy, and Air Force to test humanoid robots designed to breach enemy positions. The company’s Phantom MK-1 is a 5-foot-9, 176-pound humanoid with 19 upper-body degrees of freedom, five-fingered hands, a camera-first vision […] This story continues at The Next Web

A new AI-powered hybrid Hollywood startup backed by AWS is betting that cutting-edge production tech can cut costs, speed up filming and bring jobs back to LA.

A new AI-powered hybrid Hollywood startup backed by AWS is betting that cutting-edge production tech can cut costs, speed up filming and bring jobs back to LA.

The Information: Sources: AI startups are struggling to access Nvidia GPUs as Microsoft and other cloud providers divert supply to internal teams and large customers like OpenAI  —  AI startups are struggling to access Nvidia graphics processing units as Microsoft and other cloud providers divert GPU stockpiles …

The cofounder of Instacart has an unusual method to assess whether founders are legitimate.

What did Eli Lilly see in a struggling biotech startup that made the pharma giant want to pay billions for it? Bryan Roberts has some answers.

The new generation of weight loss medicines does an unprecedented job of keeping off the pounds — if people stay on the drugs. Yet numerous studies suggest most of those who start taking GLP-1 drugs quit ...

X-Energy sold 44.3 million Class A shares at $23 each, above the $16–$19 marketed range, and began trading on Nasdaq under the ticker XE on 24 April. The company has $1.8 billion in prior private capital, a $500 million Amazon-led Series C-1, and a binding commitment from Amazon to buy up to 5 gigawatts of […] This story continues at The Next Web

Ananya Bhattacharya / Rest of World: Tracxn: global edtech funding fell from $16.7B in 2021 to $2.6B in 2025, while the number of startups launched dropped from 10,491 in 2021 to just 645 in 2025  —  Venture capital is moving away from K-12 edtech worldwide as investors prioritize AI tools and workforce training with clearer returns.

The government will designate 10 cities to serve as major hubs for startup ecosystems by next year in a bid to promote balanced regional growth and create more jobs for young people, the finance ministry said Friday. It will first designate four cities that house the country's major science institutes — Daejeon, Daegu, Gwangju and UIsan — as startup hubs this year, and name six more cities outside of the greater Seoul area with such potential next year, according to the Ministry of Finance and Economy. The ministry said the initiative aims to help promote balanced regional growth as the country's startup infrastructure is mainly focused in Seoul, while other regions are suffering an outflow of population due to the lack of industrial infrastructure. Korea ranks No. 20 across the world in terms of startup ecosystem competitiveness, with massive investment in research and development (R&D) projects and active patent applications, but only has three cities listed in top 500 startup

Run by two students, Project6 hosts 48-hour mansion hacker houses in S’pore & beyond Singapore’s startup scene has a problem. It’s organised, well-funded, and growing, but it’s missing something essential: a “scrappy culture,” a sense of urgency, and spaces where builders can just… build, at least according to Canaan Poh, 23, and Xander Minzenmay, 21, […]

Donut Lab’s assertions of lightning-fast charging and high energy storage have led to a criminal complaint

For the past eighteen months, the corporate world has been obsessed with the "builder" phase of the generative AI revolution. Enterprises have raced to deploy autonomous agents to handle everything from customer support to complex codebase refactoring. However, as these digital workers proliferate, a new, more structural problem has emerged: fragmentation. Agents built on LangChain cannot easily hand off tasks to those built on CrewAI; a Salesforce-embedded agent has no native way to coordinate with a custom-built Python script running on a private cloud. Today, a new startup, BAND (also known as Thenvoi AI Ltd.) exited stealth with $17 million in Seed funding to provide the "interaction infrastructure" necessary to turn these isolated tools into a unified, collaborative workforce. "In order for agents to become real players in the global economy, they need ways to communicate, just like humans do," said co-founder and CEO Arick Goomanovsky

The private equity investment will be used to give retail customers indirect price exposure to OpenAI through venture tokens.

Paterna Biosciences says it has determined the set of instructions needed to turn sperm-making stem cells into "normal, mature" sperm.

Founded in 2022 and formerly called Constellation Technologies & Operations, Univity is targeting a constellation of at least 1,600 satellites in very low Earth orbit, using telecom operators’ own 5G mmWave spectrum rather than competing with them. The Series A takes total financing to €68M across equity, debt, subsidies and contract revenues. Univity, the Paris-based […] This story continues at The Next Web

DeepSeek is in talks with Tencent and Alibaba as the AI startup explores a funding round that could value it at over $20 billion. Importance Rank:  1 read more

Zach Rosenfield, president and CEO of RMG, shares his playbook for getting maximum results from your PR efforts.

Market expert Kyle Welborn highlights resilient AgTech funding in Q1 2026, despite AI concentration skewing global venture capital trends. The post 2026 Q1 AgTech Venture Capital Investment and Exit Round Up appeared first on CropLife.

The private equity investment will be used to give retail customers indirect price exposure to OpenAI through venture tokens.

SpaceX announced the deal on X, pre-empting a New York Times report that framed it as a completed acquisition. The structure gives SpaceX optionality: exercise the call by year end or walk away having paid $10B for shared compute access and joint model work. Cursor CEO Michael Truell called it a partnership to ‘scale up […] This story continues at The Next Web

Robinhood's proprietary investment vehicle has taken a $75 million stake in OpenAI, the trading company announced Wednesday.

Robinhood's proprietary investment vehicle has taken a $75 million stake in OpenAI, the trading company announced Wednesday.

SpaceX on Tuesday announced a partnership with AI coding company Cursor and said the alliance comes with an option to buy the startup for $60 billion later this year.

SpaceX plans to acquire AI startup Cursor for $50 billion, aiming to enhance its software division and compete with industry rivals. The deal highlights Musk's commitment to advancing AI technology.

Legal startup Crosby began offering interviews on Sundays and found that candidates had an unexpected reaction to it.

Washington Post: Sources: following Manus probe, Chinese authorities ordered at least one other prominent AI startup, MiroMind, not to send talent and research out of China  —  A Chinese government probe of a Meta-acquired company, Manus AI, reveals what tech workers see as a new red line.  —  Summary

A total of 264 high-performance Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) will be provided free of charge to small and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises and artificial intelligence (AI) startups facing difficulties due to a lack of AI infrastructure.The Ministry of SMEs and Startups (MSS) announced on A

Flagship Pioneering, the life science investment firm that helped make medicines out of mRNA by launching Moderna, has similarly grand ambitions for DNA. On Tuesday, the firm unveiled its latest startup, Serif Biomedicines, backed with ...

Most startups aren't held back by bad ideas — they're constrained by incumbent-controlled systems that shape how they can operate and scale.

Networking is not merely a sprint to collect business cards and make quick connections; rather, it requires patience, perseverance and the cultivation of genuine relationships.

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Winston Weinberg attributes the company’s $11 billion valuation to a unique mindset.

The investor Venrock will make $900 million on a relatively small $20 million investment into Kelonia Therapeutics, which on Monday agreed to sell itself to Eli Lilly in a $3.25 billion upfront deal. Venrock's return — ...

The investor Venrock will make $900 million on a relatively small $20 million investment into Kelonia Therapeutics, which on Monday agreed to sell itself to Eli Lilly in a $3.25 billion upfront deal. Venrock's return — ...

A service update was triggering an error in some Teams desktop clients, forcing Microsoft to revert the changes.

Kelonia Therapeutics, a small biotech company, long struggled to stay afloat. Now it's been acquired by Eli Lilly for $3.25 billion.

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Nduka Orjinmo / Bloomberg: Nigerian drone startup Terra Industries raised $34M from Joe Lonsdale, Lux Capital, and others and is opening its first international factory in Accra, Ghana  —  Terrahaptix Inc., a Nigerian drone-making startup, will open its first factory abroad in Ghana, where it will build mid-range pilotless aircraft …

Artificial intelligence startup Cursor in talks to raise a $2 billion fundraising round at an over $50 billion valuation, which does not include the investment.

Artificial intelligence startup Cursor in talks to raise a $2 billion fundraising round at an over $50 billion valuation, which does not include the investment.

Artificial intelligence startup Cursor in talks to raise a $2 billion fundraising round at an over $50 billion valuation, which does not include the investment.

It was always going to be hard for these brands to launch their first high-volume products. Then things got a lot, lot harder.

In short: The FAA is developing SMART (Strategic Management of Airspace Routing Trajectories), an AI system that would extend air traffic conflict prediction from 15 minutes to two hours, with Palantir, Thales, and Air Space Intelligence competing for the contract. The project follows the LaGuardia crash that exposed controller overwork and aging systems, and sits […] This story continues at The Next Web

Mary Ann Azevedo / Crunchbase News: Autonomous vehicle startups raised a record $21.4B across 34 deals through April 15, up from $5.9B raised across 99 investments globally in all of 2025  —  Funding to autonomous vehicle startups has seen a massive resurgence in 2026, more than tripling so far this year compared to all of 2025 globally, Crunchbase data shows.

AI coding startup Cursor is reportedly close to raising $2 billion at a $50 billion valuation, backed by major venture and tech firms. Importance Rank:  1 read more

Natasha Mascarenhas / Bloomberg: A profile of wealth manager Iconiq, which, sources say, has $100B AUM, with $26B specifically for VC investing; Iconiq invested $3B into AI startups in 2025  —  Last year, Anthropic PBC chief Dario Amodei and a handful of executives traveled 8,000 miles from San Francisco to the Middle East.

Firms without quality software are most likely to be replaced, according to the PayPal cofounder.

The startup world celebrates bold personalities and fast pitches, yet many of the most thoughtful innovations come from quiet thinkers who question assumptions and look deeper..

Anna Tong / Forbes: AI labs are buying Slack, Jira, and email archives from defunct startups to build “reinforcement learning gyms” and train AI agents in simulated workplaces  —  Defunct startups are being liquidated for their Slack archives, Jira tickets, and email threads—operational exhaust that AI labs now treat as premium training data.

Joel Khalili / Wired: The UK unveils Sovereign AI, a £500M fund to invest in domestic AI startups, starting with Callosum, which builds software to help different chips work together  —  In a bid to minimize dependence on technology from other countries, the UK government is plowing resources into homegrown AI startups.

The UK government’s £500m Sovereign AI fund announces first cohort of startups backed to boost economic growth and national security

Jem Walters built and sold a fintech app called Snoop. Here are the choices he made and would do again for success.

Rebecca Torrence / Bloomberg: Financial services startup Slash, which is building an AI agent, raised $100M led by Ribbit at a $1.4B valuation and reports nearly $300M in annualized revenue  —  Slash Financial Inc., a financial services startup run by two 24-year-old founders, has landed a $1.4 billion valuation …

Ex-Apple, ex-Nuvia CPU designers Gerard Williams, John Bruno, and Ram Srinivasan establish Nuvacore startup to develop clean-sheet CPUs for always-on compute-intensive AI workloads.

This long beach startup powers California's  industries using off-grid power

X-energy is targeting a share price of $16–$19, which at the high end values the IPO at around $814M. Amazon led a $500M round and has committed to buying up to 5GW of nuclear power from the company by 2039.  X-energy, an Amazon-backed nuclear reactor startup, has begun its investor roadshow and filed IPO documents […] This story continues at The Next Web

Rashi Shrivastava / Forbes: Former Mercor staffers describe “operational mishaps” at the $10B startup, including employee fraud, a security breach, and suspected North Korean infiltration  —  Founded in 2023 by 20-somethings, data labeling startup Mercor exploded to $1 billion in annualized revenue run rate in September.

Sean O'Kane / TechCrunch: Filings: Caterpillar acquires self-driving electric tractor startup Monarch Tractor's assets, after it raised $200M+ and struggled to pivot to software services  —  Monarch Tractor's assets have been acquired by construction giant Caterpillar, after struggling to pivot to a software services business …

Abridge is partnering with top medical journals to bring in research for doctors to refer to during visits, pitting it against medical search giant OpenEvidence as more companies push to become all-in-one platforms for doctors. ...

In short: Accel has raised $5 billion in new capital, comprising a $4 billion Leaders Fund V and a $650 million sidecar, targeting 20-25 late-stage AI investments at an average cheque size of $200 million. The raise follows standout returns from its Anthropic stake (invested at $183B, now valued near $800B) and Cursor (backed at […] This story continues at The Next Web

Two new startups have begun testing their in vivo CAR-T therapies for autoimmune disease in people. China-based Immorna recently treated a systemic sclerosis patient with an in vivo CAR-T therapy, and the patient’s peripheral B ...

Kirsten Korosec / TechCrunch: AMD, Arm, and Qualcomm invest $60M in London-based self-driving tech startup Wayve as part of an extension to its $1.2B Series D, announced in February  —  Chipmakers AMD, Arm, and Qualcomm have invested $60 million into UK self-driving technology startup Wayve as part of an extension …

Wayve now has major semiconductor names, including Nvidia, as shareholders as it looks to sell its technology to automakers who may be using different chips.

Rebecca Torrence / Bloomberg: Accel raised $5B, including a $4B Leaders fund, focused on writing large checks to late-stage startups globally, and a $650M sidecar fund, taking AUM to $36B  —  Accel, the venture capital firm that's backed artificial intelligence companies including Anthropic, Cursor and Perplexity …

Wayve now has major semiconductor names, including Nvidia, as shareholders as it looks to sell its technology to automakers who may be using different chips.

Beeline Medicine is focused on development of five inflammatory and immune disorder drugs, starting with a potential daily pill for lupus.

Discover how VCs and universities can work together to overcome the various challenges that affect current relations. The post Mending university and venture capital relations: is it possible to see eye-to-eye?  appeared first on Labiotech.eu. © Labiotech UG and Labiotech.eu. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Labiotech UG and Labiotech.eu with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

Yuliya Chernova / Wall Street Journal: PitchBook: US growth and late-stage venture funds raised $23.6B YTD, up from $7.4B in 2025 and above the totals for any of the past 12 years, amid the AI boom  —  U.S.-based growth and late-stage venture funds raised a record $23.6 billion this year so far, according to PitchBook

Needs SpaceX et al to drop prices and give competitors a ride into space to make it work A startup called Orbital has revealed a plan to build a 10,000-satellite neocloud in space – if Elon Musk delivers on his ambitious plans to increase launch capacity and reduce costs.…

Joanna Glasner / Crunchbase News: Asia's startup funding rose 93% YoY to $27.4B in Q1, the highest quarterly total in 3+ years, with Chinese startups raising $16.5B and Indian startups $3.8B  —  Asia's startup funding swung higher in the first quarter of this year, boosted by a rebound in Chinese venture investment.

Slate Auto, the EV startup backed by Jeff Bezos, secures $650 million in funding for an affordable pickup truck slated for delivery by the end of the year. The post Jeff Bezos-Backed EV Startup Raises $650M to Launch $25K Electric Pickup appeared first on TechRepublic.

In an ambitious effort to bridge the gap between cutting-edge artificial intelligence research and real-world commercial impact, the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and the Data Science Institute at the University of Chicago have entered into a transformative partnership with the AI Research Commons (ARC). This collaboration is poised to elevate high-potential, early-stage AI […]

Bitcoin Magazine Trump Fed Pick Kevin Warsh Reveals Stake in Bitcoin Lightning Startup Flashnet Kevin Warsh, President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Federal Reserve, has reported an equity stake in Bitcoin payments startup Flashnet. This post Trump Fed Pick Kevin Warsh Reveals Stake in Bitcoin Lightning Startup Flashnet first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Micah Zimmerman.

Min-Jeong Lee / Bloomberg: Glydways, a robocar startup backed by Sam Altman, Khosla, and others, says it is in talks to raise $250M at a $1B+ valuation, following a ~$170M Series C  —  Glydways Inc., the robocar startup backed by Sam Altman, is in talks to raise an additional $250 million on the heels …

Bloomberg: Sources: cloud-computing startup Fluidstack is in talks to raise ~$1B at an $18B valuation, up from $7.5B when it raised money earlier in 2026  —  The cloud-computing startup Fluidstack Ltd. is holding funding talks with investors to bring in about $1 billion at a target valuation of $18 billion …

OpenAI has acquired Hiro Finance, a startup that offers AI-powered financial planning tools. As first reported by TechCrunch, fiscal terms of the deal, which was announced on Monday, were not disclosed by OpenAI. However, all signs point this to being an acquhire, with Hiro founder Ethan Bloch writing on LinkedIn that the company's product would stop working on April 20. Users have until May 13 to migrate their data off of Hiro's servers before everything is deleted.   It's unclear if OpenAI plans to offer a dedicated financial planning tool in the mold of Hiro. At the start of the year, the company released Prism, a Claude Code-like app for scientific research that built on its acquisition of the startup behind Crixet. At the very least, it sounds like some of the expertise Hiro has built will make its way to OpenAI's chatbot. "For decades, personalized financial guidance has been too expensive, too generic, or too hard to access. ChatGPT is finally changing that," Bloch

Michael Roddan / The Information: Polymarket is auditing its Builders Program, which gives up to $2.5M in grants, after concerns that some participating startups are facilitating insider trading  —  Polymarket was already under pressure to curb insider trading when it launched a program late last year to support startups that sent trades to its prediction market.

Hiro is shutting down on 20 April and deleting all user data by 13 May. Founder Ethan Bloch previously sold Digit to Oportun for more than $200M. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. OpenAI, the San Francisco AI lab behind ChatGPT, has acquired Hiro Finance, an AI-powered personal finance planning startup, with founder Ethan […] This story continues at The Next Web

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Dom Cooke / Colossus: A profile of Jeffrey Yan and his startup Hyperliquid, a $10B crypto exchange that never took VC money and generated $900M+ in profit in 2025 with 11 employees  —  Jeffrey Yan turned down $100 million, airdropped billions to strangers, and can't travel without a bodyguard.

Julie Bort / TechCrunch: OpenAI acquires personal finance startup Hiro Finance for an undisclosed sum; Hiro stops new signups, will shut down on April 20 and delete all data on May 13  —  OpenAI has acquired personal finance startup Hiro Finance, founder Ethan Bloch announced on Monday and OpenAI confirmed to TechCrunch.

The Information: Sources: data labeling startup Handshake's gross annualized revenue hit ~$1B, vs. $550M in January; Mercor hit a $1B+ gross annualized revenue pace this year  —  AI firms' voracious appetite for more data has lifted sales for obscure startups doing the industry's unglamorous work …

MoD plans rapid procurement of Cambridge Aerospace's Skyhammer system at home and abroad Britain is set to buy interceptors from a homegrown startup to counter Iranian Shahed-style attack drones, equipping both its own armed forces and allies in the Persian Gulf region.…

The automaker has plans to grow sales in the U.S. by roughly 30% to 35%, as well as a target to achieve breakeven this year, executives exclusively told CNBC.